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Amazon reader Jason Norton has written a five-star review of BLEED: A BOOK OF HOPE, which features my short story, “The Funeral Portrait”:

BLEED, now available at Amazon.com.

How do you feel about cancer? Have you ever really thought about it? Have you, God forbid, had to experience it? If someone asked you to illustrate it or describe it–if someone asked you to put a face on it–what would cancer look like?

Pick up a copy of BLEED, a scary-as-hell charity anthology benefiting kids with cancer, and you’ll get a vivid picture of just how terrifying it can be.

The contributing authors paint a sobering picture of the horror of the disease–perhaps not in the realism of the stories, but in the emotion fueling them. If you are a fan of the macabre, there’s plenty to love: eerie things lurking beyond the surface, zombie cannibalism, murderous plot twists and an underlying sense of creepiness that spans throughout the anthology. Some of the stories build with a ominous foreboding; others hit you with a gut punch out of nowhere allowing no chance for preparation–again, like the disease they personify.

But the scariest elements are found in the authors’ personal stories. The short bios preceding each entry detail their own experiences with cancer. It is in those stories–especially the introductory essay by editor Lori Michelle–that we see the true picture of how terrifyingly brutal the fight against this unseen enemy can be (fangs or tentacles may be easier to deal with). But we cheer just as hard for these real-life characters–these heroes–as the protagonists in the fiction. And their triumphs are better than anything any author can dream up.

Buy a copy of BLEED, enjoy some great stories and help some kids. There’s no way to go wrong here.

Read the entire review here and see if you can match the stories she/he referenced above in the table of contents below:

• “True Horror” by Lori Michelle
• “With Paper Armour and Wood Sword” by Tracie McBride
• “The Addition” by Bentley Little
• “Welcome to the World Mr. Smiles” by T Fox Dunham
• “Leukemia is Fookin’ Stoopid” by Anna DeVine
• “The Nightly Disease” by Max Booth III
• “Sludge” by Stan Swanson
• “I Am Disease” by Jen Finelli
• “Sky of Brass, Land of Iron” by Joe McKinney
• “Descent” by William F. Nolan
• “Five Little Tips” by Kristin Bryant
• “Remission” by Charlie Fish
• “Ears” by Eli Wilde
• “Mr. Expendable” by Peter N. Dudar
• “The Call” by Rick Hautala
• “Where the Wild Welo Waits” by John Hawkhead
• “A Billion Monstrosities” by Mort Castle
• “Dance of the Blue Lady” by Gene O’Neill
• “Unwoven” by Tim Waggoner
• “King Rat” by James Dorr
• “The Rooster” by Glenn Rolfe
• “The Monster in Me” by Suzie and Bruce Lockhart
• “Muted” by Hollie Snider
• “Dreams of Shadows” by Robert S. Wilson
• “The Funeral Portrait” by Christian A. Larsen
• “Impossible is Nothing” by Jack Ivey
• “The Gift” by Lindsey Beth Goddard
• “Lost and Found” by Patrick Lacey
• “That Which is Not Seen” by Dane Hatchell
• “Goddess of the Moxie Moon” by Absolutely Kate
• “Finding Peace by Writing About Cancer” by T Fox Dunham
• “The Lucky Mouth” by Gerry Huntman
• “Death Knell” by Richard Thomas
• “The Sallow Man” by Adam Millard
• “March” by Micah Joel
• “Bumper Car Bandit” by David Pointer
• “No Limit” by Peter Giglio and SS Michaels
• “The Unstoppable Annihilation” by Jeffrey C. Jacobs
• “I Know this World” by John Palisano
• “Fight” by Jay Wilburn
• “Slippery Love” by April Hawks
• “Red-Wat-Shod” by Jason V. Brock
• “Get the Cell Outta Here” by Marian Brooks
• “All the Sludge” by Benjamin Kane Ethridge
• “Never Enough” by J. David Anderson

So, pick up a copy of BLEED because it’s a great cause, but enjoy it for the stories, each guaranteed to creep under your skin.

This entry was posted on October 22, 2013 at 11:13 am and is filed under Book Reviews, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.